


Day 9 - Movie of Choice (Hotarubi no Mori e)

by RinYumii



Series: KLance AU Month - February 2019 [9]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: KLance AU Month February 2019, M/M, Mostly Fluff, One prompt a day, Spirit!Keith, The end is very sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 07:44:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17721029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RinYumii/pseuds/RinYumii
Summary: When he was a kid, Lance got lost in the forest and met a kind Spirit who showed him the way out. Each summer, the two of them would meet and talk, getting to know each other. Now an adult, Lance recalls every moment they got to spend together.





	Day 9 - Movie of Choice (Hotarubi no Mori e)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I had originally planned to write about another movie, but the fic would need to be chaptered in order to make more sense, so I wrote this instead. I had already written this fanfic for the Shingeki no Kyojin fandom nearly three years ago, but I never actually published it, so I just changed the names, edited the work a bit to look nicer, and there you have it! Also, as it was meant to be written with the characters from SnK, they might be a little bit OOC, especially Keith, pasted on top of Levi.  
> For those of you who have already watched Hotarubi no Mori e, just know I am sorry to have you reminded of it so brutally. For those of you who haven't, go watch it, and then you'll know why I'm sorry.  
> Enjoy ^^'

When I was a child, I once got lost in the Forest of Spirits. That’s when I met one of them. He talked to me while I was crying.

“Oi, little human,” he told me. “Why are you crying?”

I really didn’t expect him to offer me his help; but it was so nice of him, and I was so glad to finally meet someone who would lead me out of this forest that, without a second thought, I ran towards him, my arms stretched in front of me to take him in my arms. But at the time, I didn’t know of him being a spiritual being living in the forest, and he dodged me, leaving me to fall on the ground, into the green grass on the Summer of my sixth birthday. When I shot him a glance, thinking really hard: “Why the hell didn’t you catch me?!”, he said nothing, simply standing there while I was on my knees.

I stood up and ran towards him again, but he dodged me every single time. Whenever I thought I would finally catch him, he stepped aside, leaving me to grab air instead of his legs.

“Why won’t you let me catch you?!” I asked him, confused and frustrated by this silent game.

“If a human such as you touches me, I will disappear,” he told me with a low voice.

He was wearing a mask, so I couldn’t see the expression on his face, but surely it must have been extremely serious. And as the kid I was, there were some things I didn’t understand.

“What does it mean, to disappear?” I asked him with my childish tone, big round eyes and missing tooth.

He stood still, placing a hand on his hip. “It means I won’t be here anymore, and you won’t be able to see me ever again.”

Given his tone, I guessed he wasn’t joking and the matter was serious. Thus I knew I shouldn’t touch him no matter what. He leaned forwards to pick up a thick stick on the ground and handed it to me, holding the other side.

“Come on, I’ll lead you out of here. You’re lost, right?”

At those words, I smiled broadly at him, showing him my teeth like I still do now when I’m in a happy mood. I held the stick and he led me out of the forest, warning me never to enter it again. I refrained from jumping in his arms when I recognized the path I had come from. He his me on the head with the piece of wood to put me off. I glared at him.

“You know it’s bad to hit kids, right?” I pouted, teary-eyes and holding my aching head in my tiny hands.

“Don’t care,” he scowled. “I already warned you not to touch me.”

I smiled at him anyway while taking off, waving my hand as a goodbye. I then got an idea so I would get to see him again.

“Tomorrow,” I started explaining, “I’ll come back with some food so we can picnic, the both of us!”

He seemed to sigh behind his mask. “Are you deaf?” he said. “I already told you it’s dangerous in there. If you get lost again I won’t be there to help you. Don’t come back here, or else you won’t make it alive more than five minutes.”

Ignoring the near-threatening warning he’d given me, I replied cheerfully:

“By the way, my name’s Lance!”

He didn’t reply, and I heard my uncle call for me so I started walking slowly towards him when I heard the voice behind me:

“Keith,” he said, but as I turned back to look at him one last time, he had already vanished. All I could see was the forest’s entrance, without anyone around.

My uncle ran to me and took me in his arms sounding panicked.

“Lance! I’ve searched for you everywhere! Don’t disappear off by yourself anymore, I was worried sick you know? What would I tell your parents if anything happened to you? Come on, let’s go back home, dinner’s almost ready.”

I don’t quite remember why, but as my uncle held my hand and brought me home, I suddenly started crying. Maybe the fear of having been lost in that forest had been coming back? Or maybe it had been something else entirely… Thinking about it again, it probably had something to do with Keith.

The next day, I told my uncle I was going back out to play and I wouldn’t be back before the evening. He cooked me something to eat for lunch and packed it all nicely in a basket. I also took a packet of sweets and biscuits to share with Keith.

When I went back to the forest entrance, I was so happy to see Keith waiting for me there that I ran towards him, holding my arms out in front of me for a hug. He hit me on the head with the stick again. I rubbed the place he had hit me on while showing a broad smile, happy to see him again, and I proudly waved the basket containing our lunch in front of him.

He led me to his “secret spot”, a clearing right in the center of the forest. On the way, a black, misshapen creature appeared before us. The thing had short arms, protruding eyes staring at me and a mouth hiding sharp teeth. It spoke.

“Keith, why are you letting a human child in the Forest of Spirits? I really want to swallow him whole.” I got scared and stepped backwards slightly. “Listen, little human,” it said to me. “Make sure to never touch Keith, okay? If anything were to happen to him, you would pay with your life, trust me.”

Keith placed himself between me and the creature, extending a protecting arm in front of me for an extra protection. His voice sounded angry when he spoke.

“Go away this instant. I won’t let you hurt Lance, got it?”

The thing, likely frightened by the tone Keith had used, crouched back on itself like a small wild animal before changing into a smaller, ginger creature with two tails in a soft “poof”.

“A fox?” I asked.

“Don’t mind him. As long as you stay close to me, nothing can hurt you.”

Comfortably seated on a blanket I brought with me, we started eating, next to one another, but reasonably distanced so there were no risk I would touch him by accident. Keith didn’t really like sweets, but he still ate the cherry popsicle I gave him before it melted underneath the hot summer weather. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing various games together.

Then, we spent the days the same way, meeting near the forest, eating together at the clearing, playing games, and going back home. They all succeeded one after the other.

“Keith, you know,” I told him one day. “I can’t come and play tomorrow. I have to go back to my home to go to school… But I come back every summer to visit my uncle.”

“So, you can come back next year?” he asked, a hint of expectancy in his low voice.

I nodded as I left him at the forest entrance, walking back home.

The following year, I asked my uncle all sorts of questions about the Forest of Spirits. He told me that each year, lights could be seen in the night. It was his wife’s best friend who had told him about a “Spirits’ festival.” Those were only just rumours, of course. I went to see Keith, I had missed him so much during this year spent apart from him.

That’s when an accident almost happened. I had climbed into a tree to scare Keith and see his surprised face - although that was pointless because of the mask he was wearing - but the branch on which I was sitting snapped under my weight and I felt myself falling, pulled down towards the ground by gravity. Keith hurried forward to catch me before I could hurt myself, both arms stretched in front of him, but hesitated right before I crashed into the bushes underneath the tree.

“Phew, that was a close call,” I said, sitting up and removing a few leaves that were stuck in my head and on my clothes. “If you’d been quicker, you would have touched me! Please, don’t ever touch me, okay?”

It had been the last thing I told him for the rest of that summer before I burst into tears. I had been glad Keith hadn’t touched me and was still there in front of me, but I had also been anxious, because the accident could have really happened. And if my only friend had disappeared because of me, I would have never been able to forgive myself.

The next year, as he was sleeping peacefully in the clearing, I became curious about what his face might look like. Keith had always been wearing his mask and never took it off, and I didn’t know what he looked like.

“Do you even have a face at all?” I asked my sleepy friend quietly.

Obviously, I didn’t receive an answer from him. So, I proceeded to take his mask off of his face. “It’ll be alright if it’s just his mask, right?” I tried to persuade myself. I gulped and put both hands on the edges of the mask, lifting it off slowly, carefully, and I contemplated my friend’s sleeping face.

I had only been able to see his wild white hair framing a funny-looking mask all this time, and curiosity finally took over. Without his mask covering his features, I was startled by his beauty and felt my face flushing. He opened a purple eye, and overwhelmed by a sudden panic, I brutally slammed the mask back on his face, hitting his nose in the process.

Keith shot up just as brutally, groaning in pain. I clumsily apologized, stating I’d never seen his face before and that I’d always been very curious by nature. He didn’t seem upset, in the contrary. He smiled at me mysteriously and placed the mask on the soft grass next to him, leaving me to examine his face as much as I wanted.

“You know, I haven’t always been a Spirit living in this forest.” I looked at him intently, listening closely, and he continued his story. “I was only a toddler when I was abandoned by my family. I was crying, already knowing I would never know the warmth of a home. I already knew the pain of being rejected by those who were supposed to love you unconditionally. The Spirits took me in and gave me this mask, but in return, I had to be a part of this forest.”

“But why are you wearing a mask then? You don’t really need it, you’re very handsome you know?”

I still blush while remembering those words, just like I did when I told them to Keith, embarrassed.

“If I didn’t wear a mask, I wouldn’t look like a Spirit, would I?”

He winked at me and I blushed a brighter shade of red in front of his beauty. He set his mask back onto his face and we walked back at dusk. Butterflies fluttered all around us and, hearing Keith’s footsteps stop behind me, I looked back. Keith tilted his head upwards, one of the white butterflies landing on the mask where his nose should be. He removed his mask, and the view I got of him at that moment would forever stay engraved in my memory. Keith, peaceful, eyes closed and the wind lifting his snowy hair softly, making the strands dance around his face, his head lifted towards the sky and the sun setting behind the forest’s trees.

The next day, I brought him a wool scarf.

“What’s this for, kiddo?”

“That’s a scarf so you don’t catch a cold in winter.”

Behind me, my uncle called out to me.

“I’ve got to go! See you next year, Keith!”

Before he would even say anything, I ran towards my uncle’s house, whom I wouldn’t see again for a full year. The more the years passed, and the more I waited for summer to come so I could see him again. The winter that year had seemed to last for a lifetime. The ice had quickly invaded the rooftops and the roads, and I nearly slipped and fell on my butt several times. Luckily, my two best friends Hunk and Pidge had been there to save me from the public humiliation. I often got bored in my city, and thought about Keith everyday, neglecting my friends and studies, daydreaming. I had noticed that he grew older way slower than a regular human did, and when I turned fifteen, I was already two inches taller than him.

I also wondered about his nature as a Spirit.

“Say, Keith,” I started while we were walking in the forest as we did each summer since nearly ten years. “Why are you going to disappear if a human touches you?”

“Hmm? My body is stable thanks to the spiritual power of the forest. If it is touched, it would be so unstable that it would vanish and fly away like dust in the wind.”

One night, while we were fishing, a field of fireflies behind us, Keith asked me:

“Would you like to come with me to the Spirits’ festival? One is held in the forest each year during summer, at night. I couldn’t ask you before, you were too young and you would have flipped out.”

I got excited, a smile taking place on my face. “Are you kidding?! I would love to go with you! I thought it was just a rumour though…”

“No no, they’re real. Both humans and Spirits gather to have fun together. It’s a good way to create great memories before the end of summer, and to make new friends as well. Meet me at the usual place tonight at seven.”

Evening came and I met Keith at the forest entrance dressed in a light kimono, and we entered the Forest to go to the Spirits’ festival. So we didn’t get separated by the crowd, Keith tied a white piece of cloth around his wrist and asked me to do the same. I was pleasantly surprised by the warm light shining in the night slowly falling on the forest. There were a lot of different things to do, lots of different foods to eat, and the Spirits took the appearance of humans so they could also enjoy their night without scaring the humans. Keith had been right: we had spent a wonderful time, and the moment would be forever engraved in my memory and my heart. As the event drew to a close, Keith led me towards the exit, and we walked slowly so we wouldn’t break the moment and the magical atmosphere around us. I softly chuckled to myself.

“This looks like a date…”

“It is.”

Keith removed his mask and gently placed it on my face. He then leaned forwards and placed his lips on the item, at the place where my mouth would be. I felt my cheeks blushing. We then kept walking, and I tried in vain to calm my racing heart as well as the warmth on my cheeks, invisible to Keith because of the mask placed on my face and hiding them.

Children ran past us and one of them tripped and would have fallen down if not for Keith’s hand grabbing his slender arm and putting him back on his feet. The kid thanked Keith with a toothy smile and went back to have fun with his friends, laughing happily. Soon after the brief contact, Keith’s fingers started to disappear in a blue glow. I removed the mask from my face and I realized what that would mean for Keith.

“But then!... This child was a human! Keith, you’ll… disappear…”

As I tried to hold my tears back, preventing them from escaping my eyes and betraying my emotions, Keith held his arms open in front of him as an invitation, smiling broadly.

“Come in my arms, Lance! Finally I can touch you!”

I ran towards him, only caring about the memory of his body pressed against mine in a tight embrace and the kiss I gave him back as he vanished in a burst of shining bubbles, reminding me of the fireflies we had seen earlier. Slowly, they made their way into the night sky, like stars going to take their rightful place, and I dropped to my knees, my legs unable to hold my weight anymore and my heart hurting in my chest, feeling like it was being pierced by a thousand needles.

The tears streamed down my cheeks as pressed against me the only physical item he had ever gifted to me: the precious mask he had been wearing his entire life and that he had given to me as he disappeared. I couldn’t calm down. The only person towards whom I had developed romantic feelings had just vanished right in front of me. After a while, the tears had stopped, although the crushing sensation was still present in my heart, and I slowly made my way back to my uncle’s house, dragging my feet. At the edge of the forest, the Spirits talked to me. They told me Keith had always felt lonely and that he only had one wish he had held dear in his heart: that of being touched by a human. To feel some of that warmth. He had wished more than anything else to have feelings other than that of loneliness.

It took me several years to overcome this sorrow, and I keep thinking about Keith everyday of my life. I hope from the bottom of my heart that, wherever he might be now, he hasn’t forgotten about me either.

**Author's Note:**

> This end will forever kill me! I hope you liked it...  
> I don't usually like re-writing an existing movie/book by just changing the characters, because then there is nothing original. In fanfics, the only thing you take is the fandom. You write the characters as if they were your own, and make them do whatever you want them to according to the plot you came up with. The idea you developed and turned into a plot is original to some extent (maybe it's been done before, but your version of it is what is original), but simply taking the characters you want and putting them _instead_ of the characters of the movie, that is not original at all. That's why I don't usually do it. But I kinda had to for this prompt, because there wasn't much else I could do without making it look like a simple crossover - this one was aimed more towards artists, I think, otherwise it's just plain plagiarism. Anyway, enough with my rambling.  
> I'll see you tomorrow for Day 10 - Youtubers.


End file.
